Colin Walsh

Student-run radio station WRFL cares about promoting independent and progressive music and art, especially in Lexington. That’s why they’re bringing back the week long arts festival Boomslang for a second run.

This year’s Boomslang, subtitled “A Celebration of Sound & Art,” began  Thursday night, with a dance party at Bar Lexington.

WRFL Public Relations Director Anthony Taylor said he has high expectations for this year’s bigger and better Boomslang.

“We are more focused than last year,” Taylor said. “Last year was great but now, having the experience from the previous one, we know what we want and have more quality across the board as far as venues and artists go…Everything is a lot more professional.”

Taylor said the event would host several performers.

“I’m very excited about Death, they’re a Detroit punk rock group from the early 70’s. They’re really a missing link from music history.”

The African-American trio, all brothers, were never too popular because of their ahead-of-their- time punk style and broke up in 1977, but Death recently made a comeback, releasing an album, “…For the Whole World to See,” in 2009.

They will be playing at Buster’s on Saturday at 10:45 p.m. and tickets are $12 for students. Doors for Death and seven other performances open at 5:00 p.m. The show is 18 and up.

“I’m also very excited about Glass Candy, a modern throwback to ‘Italo Disco,’ or simply disco made from Italy,” Taylor said. “But I’m also very excited about the local talent we have.”

Taylor says WRFL is confident in the project ant its value to the city of Lexington.

“It’s a very important thing for the city to demonstrate the fact that we support the arts as a whole,” Taylor said. “With something like Boomslang we can show that Lexington isn’t just Louisville’s little brother, we can do something different.”

Boomslang Organizer Matt Gibson said he feels the philosophy hasn’t changed, and that people should come around to Boomslang for a possible once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Gibson said some of the acts mix the strange with the beautiful and are almost impossible to hear anywhere else.

“Tomorrow Akron/Family from Brooklyn, N.Y. is going to be really exceptional,” Gibson said. “They play a very touching and sincere combination of freak folk and psychedelic rock, very strange, but very beautiful.

“Sunday, we have a performer named Ben Frost, an Australian who lives in Iceland. He will be doing electronic sound sculpture. They give the audience a visceral physical feeling, he creates more of a general atmosphere rather than the type of thing you would tap your toe and nod your head to.”

Taylor said he thought people would come to the event.

“We put a lot of money behind it and we’re confident that people truly care about this,” Taylor said. “We definitely have the ability of getting Buster’s to its 1,000 person capacity.”